Memoirist Reflects On Summers Spent Working At Mini-Golf Course

The writer and poet June Melby might have grown up in Iowa, but starting from age 10, she also had a second home: a miniature golf course near Waupaca that she and her family would operate during the summer months.

As Melby shares in her new memoir, “My Family and Other Hazards,” her parents bought the Tom Thumb Miniature Golf Course on a whim, hoping it would augment their teachers’ salaries.

“It was on a lake. There were no other businesses … It was just cottages, cottages, cottages, miniature golf course,” said Melby.

While the Melby sisters envisioned summers that would be spent putting and relaxing, running a golf course turned out to be hard work. Melby found herself handling her first customers when she was only 10 years old. Painting, raking and ridding the course of frogs that clogged up the ball tunnels were also a regular part of her summertime life.

“We were working so other people could have fun — and as a kid, that’s really irritating,” said Melby.

When she grew older, however, Melby came to appreciate the happy golfers who turned up to play in her front yard, many of whom came from all around the region.

And the foil to the daily work of Tom Thumb, was the beauty of Wisconsin. Every year on her birthday, Melby and her younger sister, Clara, made a ritual of biking out to the state park and floating in one of the area’s many lakes.

However, the Midwest's beauty wasn’t enough to keep Melby there once she became a young woman. She spent years in Los Angeles working as a stand-up comedian, enjoying some success but never quite breaking through.

When the news came that her parents were going to sell Tom Thumb due to climbing property taxes, Melby was surprised to find herself heartbroken. She daydreamed that she had enough money to buy the golf course and give it to her parents, instead of watching as it was sold off.

Luckily, Melby found an outlet for her creativity and her girlhood memories in the writing of her new memoir, as well as a way to say good-bye to her childhood.

“I kind of feel like I did capture it in the book,” Melby said. “And that makes me happy.”

As of the printing of Melby’s book, the Tom Thumb golf course is up for sale again.

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